


Primal Natures

by Khashana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (in that Kent consents to the sex but not to being turned into a werewolf during it), Alternate Universe—Werewolves, Anal Sex, Autistic Jack Zimmermann, Bonding, Dubious Consent, Foursome - F/F/M/M, Hockey-typical homophobia and misogyny, I borrowed Connor Hellebuyck’s name and position but his personality is all me, Innuendo, Knotting, Multi, One-Sided Bond, Panic Attack, Polyamory Negotiations, Porn With Plot, Slight Voyeurism, Sort Of, Steroid Abuse, Underage Sex, Unsafe Sex, and then proceed to have more sex as wolves, animal sex, better safe than sorry, does it still count if everyone’s doing it, endgame kent/omc, gay man having sex with a woman out of curiosity, okay yeah definitely themes of rape, possible themes of rape, they shift into wolf form in the middle of having sex guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-18 17:57:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14857490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana
Summary: READ THE TAGS.What if NHL players were werewolves?





	1. The Turning

**Author's Note:**

> For several squares on Parse Bingo: Werewolves AU, Unrequited Bond, Team Bonding, and Kent/OMC.

Cover by [jlzimmermann](http://www.jlzimmermann.tumblr.com/)

 

Kent wonders a lot if Jack regrets changing him.

Juniors is a _big deal_ , Kent often thinks people don’t realize it. Of course it’s nothing like the NHL, but it’s commitment, it’s throwing away pretty much your shot at a good education, because nobody gets good grades constantly on the move like that.

Unless of course you’re Jack.

If you’re Jack, your parents will buy your way into an NCAA Division 1 Ivy League school anyway and probably let you think it was the same second chance anyone would get. Kent loved the Zimmerparents, but he didn’t have a lot of respect for the way they brought up Jack.

Anyway. Juniors is a big deal. And one of the shittier things the brass does is let you sign your life away without warning you that there’s something of a prerequisite for playing in the NHL, this thing you’ve now committed to doing.

I mean, it’s not like Kent had to sign paperwork or anything, when he was drafted, _I, Kent Vincent Parson, certify that I am a werewolf_ , but you just don’t get to the level you need to be at, otherwise.

Kent remembers it so clearly, almost as clearly as the day of the draft. He was at the gym whenever he didn’t have practice, spending hours shooting pucks and running on the treadmill and lifting weights, and nothing was working. He was falling behind, in speed, in ability to take a check, even in sheer skill, like he’d plateaued. He didn’t understand it. It was happening to a lot of them, but those guys who were still ahead? There was nothing they were doing that Kent’s group wasn’t. And one day he broke a plate over his knee in anger and frustration and almost cried.

“What’s the difference?” he begged of Jack. “What makes you better? What’s your secret?” Jack sighed at him.

“You really want to make it to the show, Kenny? There’s no going back.”

“There already isn’t any going back,” said Kent bitterly.

“I can make you better,” said Jack slowly. “If you really want me to.”

“ _Anything,_ ”

“Come by tonight, then.”

Kent never knows whether or not to be ashamed of the fact he figured Jack was going to give him performance enhancing drugs and he went over anyway without hesitation. He supposes, in a way, Jack did exactly that.

He knocked on Jack’s window that night and Jack opened it, extending a hand to help him through. Kent’s heart beat so fast he felt vaguely sick, but he took the hand and scaled the short wall, jumping down to the floor. Jack didn’t let go of his hand. Instead, he put the other hand on Kent’s shoulder, leaned over, and kissed his neck, open-mouthed. Kent let out a startled gasp, that quickly turned into a stifled moan as Jack bit down.

“Shh,” said Jack, licking over the bite and mouthing his way up to Kent’s jaw. “Don’t wake anyone up.” He started working on a hickey at the crook of Kent’s jaw. Kent reached out with the hand Jack wasn’t still holding and wrapped it around the back of Jack’s neck, holding him there. Jack snickered against his neck, and Kent pinched him. Jack dropped his hand to wind the arm around Kent’s waist instead, hauling him in, and finally kissed him on the lips. Kent kissed him back with a sudden desperation, Jack’s dick was rubbing against his own, and it was the best feeling he’d ever experienced. Jack palmed him through his shorts, and Kent spread his legs to give him a better angle. Grunting in surprise, Jack shifted them sideways to press him into the wall. _God,_ that was better than it had any right to be. The hand not touching his dick was now holding him in place, and Kent rode a wave of euphoria at the manhandling, higher and higher. Then Jack pulled his hand away to pull his own shorts down, and Kent felt his impeding orgasm recede. Instead, he reached for Jack’s dick, collecting some of the fluid leaking steadily from the tip, and started to stroke him. It was Jack’s turn to groan, muffling the sound in Kent’s hair, and Kent took it as encouragement. He leaned up to suck a hickey into Jack’s neck, and Jack started to buck into his hand. Suddenly, Kent’s head was jerked away from Jack’s neck, and Jack claimed his lips again, muffling a shout by biting down on Kent’s lip _hard_ as he came. The pain went straight to Kent’s dick and tipped him over the edge, too. _God._

They just stood there for a moment, panting and coming down from the high together. Then Jack broke away and went for the box of tissues, cleaning himself up and tossing the box to Kent, who fumbled it. Yes, he was a soon-to-be professional athlete, but not in baseball, and he had just lost his virginity to his best friend, all right? He cleaned himself up, too, stripped off his shirt when Jack asked for it, and slid down the wall to sit while Jack washed the come out of their clothes. He closed his mouth and tasted blood where Jack had bit his lip. Instinctively, he sucked on the wound until it stopped bleeding.

“I’ll throw these in with my Under Armour,” said Jack, and tossed him a Pens shirt that was far too big for him. (Kent caught it this time.) “You can wear that home.”

Right. No one could know, so, no staying over. Of course not, Kent reminded himself, even if one of them was a girl, he was still sneaking out. He pulled on the Pens shirt and caught Jack looking at him like something good to eat. Kent tossed him a smirk, which Jack returned.

It didn’t occur to Kent until he got home again that Jack had never shown him what was supposed to make his hockey better. It made him feel good to think that he was just so sexy anything else had flown out of Jack’s head, so he didn’t question it too much.

The next day at practice, Jack kept smirking at him across the locker room and the ice, and as they battled over the puck at one point, he whispered in Kent’s ear, “I want to fuck you.”

Kent lost the puck, and Jack scored with it.

The smugness radiated off him. So when they switched up, Kent positioned himself for a pass from Jack, and when he didn’t pass it, yelled, “I’m wide open and ready for you, Zimms! Give it to me!”

Jack tripped over the fucking ice and fell on his face.

As they were tidying up, Jack tossed his hockey stick at Kent, ostensibly so he could help pick up traffic cones, and said, “Take my stick, Parse?”

Kent was ready for him this time, and said, completely straight-faced, “Sure, Zimms. Wanna practice stick-handling tonight?”

Jack only choked a little, this time, and said, completely serious, “Eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock,” Kent repeated.

“Go clean up,” said Jack. “Be thorough.” And he winked.

Thorough? What—oh.

He had to wait until he got home to do that part, since they had communal showers, but that left him plenty of time to force down dinner past his nerves and attempt to act normal in front of his billet family. He actually preferred it when Jack jumped him out of nowhere and he had no time to be nervous. At twenty minutes to eight, he snuck out and headed over. It was early in the season, so the sun was still up, but he still managed not to get caught.

Another consequence of the timing was that he could just knock on the door, and Zimms opened it.

Jack’s earlier bravado was gone, and he looked as nervous as Kent felt. Somehow, that made Kent’s heartrate slow down a little, and he found a cocky smirk for Jack.

“Parents gone?” He’d noticed the lack of a car in the driveway.

“Yeah. Opera.”

“So. You gonna handle my stick, Zimms?”

They moved at the same time, crashing into each other like a full-body check, only this ended in a sizzling kiss and Jack pulling Kent’s shirt off.

“You look good in my clothes,” he muttered, and Kent grinned.

“I was just figuring I’d give it back to you, and wear the shirt I left here home, but if that does it for you…”

“You look better out of them,” Jack added, and let Kent pull his shirt off, too. Then Kent was being kissed within an inch of his sanity, Jack’s tongue licking deep into his mouth and causing his skin to spark all over. He let the moan out this time, clinging desperately to Jack’s muscular back and letting himself be thoroughly kissed.

Jack broke away to murmur, “Are you ready for me?”

“I’m even stretched out for you,” Kent answered brazenly, and Jack’s dick twitched against his thigh.

“Good,” he said, voice a low growl, unbuttoned Kent’s jeans, and shoved them down to his knees.

In the time it took for Kent to step out of them, and his boxers, Jack had shucked his own pants and produced a bottle of lube from God knows where.

“Hands and knees,” he ordered, and Kent got down on the shag rug obediently. Jack pitched an old towel down on the floor with an offhand “Don’t come on my parents’ rug,” and Kent obediently spread it out, thrilling at the fact that Jack had had that ready, like he’d been planning all along on fucking Kent on his parents’ shag rug, like he’d never expected to get as far as the bedroom. “Let’s see how good a job you did stretching out,” said Jack, and stuck a finger inside him.

Kent yelped more with surprise than pain. He really had fingered himself, but that had been a couple of hours ago. Jack planted a kiss on his bare spine and curled his free hand possessively around as much of Kent’s thigh as he could. Kent groaned. That hand was so close to his dick, and yet so far away…

Jack slid another finger in, scissoring them, and Kent pushed back, fucking himself on those fingers that he was never going to look at the same way again.

Three fingers. And then. Oh god. The tip of Jack’s dick.

“Not much for the foreplay, eh, Zimms?” he chirped breathlessly.

“We’re seventeen,” came the answer. And, well, fair. Kent probably wouldn’t have got this far if they’d done a lot first.

He slid smoothly inside, not too fast, but not too gently either, and Kent was so _full_. Zimms was draped over him now, legs bumping the backs of his thighs, one hand on Kent’s side, holding him still, and then he was moving. Kent groaned at the stretch, pressing back for even more, for as much as Jack could give him. _God,_ this was so _overwhelming,_ , he felt like his body itself was stretching out of shape, and maybe he had a fever, because it felt like a hundred degrees in here and there was something weird going on with his vision and his head was swimming. His hands and knees were cramping from the position and he couldn’t feel his mouth, but it was fine, it was all fine, because he was getting fucked by Jack Zimmermann on his living room floor.

“Fuck,” Jack muttered. “I’d hoped to have gotten through a round first.”

Which, what?

Zimms didn’t stop though, just hammered faster, and by the time he noticed the fur sprouting from his arms, he was too fucking far gone to want to stop.

His hands were gone, they were paws, and he wasn’t on his knees anymore because his legs weren’t long enough for that, his color vision was weird, and everything smelled so much stronger. Zimms’s hand was curled around his ribs anymore, he was braced on Kent’s hips, weight forward, forcing him to crouch to take the weight better, and still fucking into him. Then Zimms _growled,_ and Kent came.

The noise that came out of him was distinctly not human.

He was so dazed that he never noticed Jack coming, and just laid down on the towel right where he was.

Jack didn’t pull out—Kent wasn’t sure he _could_ , he still felt so big inside him—he just maneuvered himself around into Kent’s field of vision and laid down, chest to chest.

And licked Kent across the face. Because Jack was a sleek, black wolf.

 _What the actual fuck,_ Kent wanted to say, but his throat didn’t seem to be shaped for words anymore. He opened his mouth and his tongue lolled out. Jack poked his face with his nose, and Kent swatted at him. With a paw. A golden blonde paw.

They lay like that for a few minutes, licking and nuzzling at each other, until Jack’s erection went down enough for him to pull out.

He immediately jumped up, turned, and looked over his shoulder, like _Follow me_. Kent sighed heavily, pulled himself to his feet, and did. They padded up the stairs and into the master bedroom, and Jack stopped in front of the full-length mirror. Kent looked into it and saw what he already knew.

He was a wolf, too.

He stared, taking in the details of his snout, the white patch on his chest, the grey eyes. When he’d looked his fill, he glanced back over at Jack, whose pale blue eyes and sheer _awkward_ vibe made it impossible to pretend it wasn’t him. Jack padded out of the room again, and Kent followed. This time, Jack went right to the front door and opened it by pulling down on the handle with a paw. Handy, that it wasn’t a knob. After Kent followed him out, he shoulder-checked the door closed again and loped away over the lawn. Kent ran after him.

There was nothing like running as a wolf. The wind in his fur, the tantalizing array of smells. He could process visual information faster, somehow, to keep him from catching his paws on tree roots or running headlong into low-hanging branches while still moving breathtakingly fast, still keeping Jack within his awareness while he stared around.

They slowed together. Kent’s nose caught a new smell. _Other wolves._ They loped into sight, a black one like Jack, but with brown eyes, and a light brown one with Jack’s ice blue eyes. _Bob and Alicia,_ Kent realized, followed by the inane, _Alicia must dye her hair._ They sniffed each other, and while Kent was busy wondering if this was Jack bringing him home to meet the parents, more wolves approached.

Kent was getting better at recognizing the people in the wolves, though a few were still strangers. There was their coach, and their assistant coach. And here, here were his teammates—not all of them, but all of the best players, and some of the mediocre ones. Easily twenty wolves were there, play-fighting, greeting each other, and coming to sniff Kent.

Then Coach howled, and everyone stopped what they were doing and paid attention. Coach led them deeper into the woods, chasing a faint scent that grew stronger, and Kent realized what it was only when the pack spread out and encircled it.

A deer.

He kept waiting for the revulsion to hit, but it never came, not while they hunted, killed, and shared the deer, and not when they did it again with a new deer. After that, Coach seemed sated, and the wolves broke off into smaller groups, though they mostly remained in smelling distance. Jack, apparently not out of energy, jumped on Kent, who rolled over and play-fought back. Desire gripped him, and he picked a direction and ran, while Jack chased him. As soon as he felt reliably out of sight of the other wolves, he dropped his shoulders instinctively and raised his tail.

Jack mounted him without hesitation and slid home.

Now that he wasn’t mid-shift, he could appreciate the sex better, focus on Jack sliding in and out of him. They had sex a third time before the sun came up, and it was like the first time in reverse, both of them shifting back to human as they lay, tied and tangled and sated, in the grass as the sun came up. Jack slid easily out, Kent’s human body no longer optimally shaped to stay hooked together face-to-face and Jack’s dick no longer swelling like it had something to prove.

Kent tried to sit up and groaned in agony as all of his muscles protested. Jack laughed at him.

“Shut up,” rasped Kent, “you have explaining to do.”

Jack shrugged, the smile dropping off his face.

“That’s the secret. That’s why some of us have an edge. Professional NHL players are werewolves.”

Despite all of the evidence of last night, it was the first time anyone had actually said the word out loud and it sounded very strange.

“What, all of them?”

“…Yeah.”

Kent rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Fuck, am I glad we don’t have practice today.”

“We never do, after a full moon. Coach goes easy on us there.”

Kent snorted at the idea that Coach ever went easy on them.

“He does! Pro teams have to play _games_ like this. The only concession the League makes is not scheduling games on a full moon after dark, and they really don’t have a choice there, not unless they want the televised game being played by a literal pack of wolves.”

“And you pass it by _fucking_ each other? Has the entire League slept together by proxy? Why the fuck is the no-homo culture so bad, then?”

Jack looked embarrassed. “Euh, no. You pass it by bite, the same as in the legends. Or some of us are born that way. The sex just sort of…happened.”

Kent sucked his bottom lip in, remembering Jack biting it til it bled.

“I take it you don’t need to be transformed when you do the biting.”

Jack shook his head and Kent remembered something.

“Right before I. Transformed. You said you’d wanted to get in a round first.”

Jack turned red. “Wolf sex isn’t exactly gentle,” he muttered. “I figured I’d be less likely to hurt you if we’d already gone a round. Loosened you up. Gotten any talking out of the way.”

“And you were just so sure I wouldn’t have other things on my mind after you _turned me into a werewolf._ ”

Jack hid his face in his hands. “I don’t know why this is so embarrassing,” he moaned. “You were _there_. You initiated it. Twice. Was I wrong?”

Kent remembered the strength of the desire and had to concede that if Jack had asked him over a little later, and they’d transformed before getting to the sex, that he’d definitely still have gone for it after the fact.

“I’m mostly chirping you,” he admitted, rolling over and kissing Jack chastely. “I’ve never been so fucking horny in my life.”

“The moon does that to you,” said Jack, and kissed him back, less chastely. They made out for a minute, not caring that they were buck naked and filthy in the middle of the woods while the sun came up.

“Hair of the wolf that bit you?” Jack gasped between kisses, sliding a hand down to stroke Kent’s dick and somehow managing to smirk at the same time.

“I could be convinced,” panted Kent, and tugged Jack on top of him. After the rounds of frantic sex of the night before, they were content to rut slowly against each other, kissing and groping. Kent got his hands on Jack’s frankly amazing butt and squeezed. Jack groaned happily and spread his legs until his knees hit the dirt, using the leverage to rut harder against Kent. “Naw, c’mon,” said Kent. “You’ve spoiled me man, I want the whole enchilada.”

“The what now?” asked Jack, stopping what he was doing to laugh hysterically.

“It’s not that funny! People say that!” Jack shut him up by kissing him, wonderfully deep and intimate, and nudging his knees in between Kent’s until Kent spread his legs and hooked them over Jack’s shoulders. Jack grabbed his thigh with one hand and spat on the other, giving his dick a cursory wetting and guiding it into Kent, who was still loose and open. He thrust almost lazily into Kent, who almost moaned with how good it felt.

They stayed there for a while, rocking together and fucking, and Kent wondered how the hell he had enough energy for this. Was it a wolf thing? Stay up all night having three rounds of athletic sex and still be alert enough to enjoy lazy morning sex? His attention was diverted when Jack wrapped a hand around his dick and stroked him to completion, following soon after and flopping back down in the grass beside him.

“C’mon, I need a shower,” said Kent, “especially if I’m going to sneak back into my house before my billet mother notices I’m not there.” That reminded him of something. “Your parents are gonna come home and see our clothes all over the floor.” And then, “You told me they were at the _opera_.”

Jack just laughed, the fucker. “Standard excuse when normals ask us to do shit on full moon nights,” he explained. He failed to elaborate on how his parents definitely knew he and Kent were fucking now. He stood up and pulled Kent to his feet, and they started the walk home in silence. Kent noticed that he actually still knew which direction the house was, despite the long night, and clearly Jack did too.

By the time they got back to the Zimmermann house, it really was getting late, and Kent forewent his shower in favor of throwing yesterday’s clothes back on (including the Pens shirt, dammit Zimms) and going straight home to take one there before his billet mother caught sight of him.

He noticed the difference in practice almost immediately. He was faster, stronger, better at taking checks, and he could process information faster, make better predictions about where the puck would be. No fucking wonder everybody who wanted to go pro ended up like this, he thought. If steroids were legal, everyone would be on them, too, just to get back on equal footing. His stats soared, his slump ended, and his extra practice started actually paying off in his game. Jack sent him a Tumblr list of calendars, watches, and other shit that kept track of the phase of the moon. Kent noticed for the first time that NHL charity calendars always did that, right alongside major holidays. And Kent and Jack started a passionate sexual affair that was largely an open secret in the Rimouski pack.

That was another thing. He had a _pack_. He was part of the group now in some indefinable way he’d never noticed was lacking. The other wolves treated him as one of them, those players committed irrevocably to the game, sharing in a secret from the rest of the world. Everything was great.

Until the draft, of course.


	2. The Bond

“Hey, Parser,” said Shorty one day after practice, “You and Zimmermann bonded or what?”

“What?” said Kent, taking a step back in surprise. “What d’you mean? We’re friends.”

“Chill, man.” Shorty held up both hands, as though calming a frightened animal. “Did he not explain bonds? He turned you, right?” Kent only nodded slowly, apprehension filling his bones. “Yeah, so, sometimes bonds form between wolves and their sires. It’s not like, _gay_ or anything, it’s just like, a strong sense of that person and the kind of person they are, and what they’re feeling? All the best D-pairs have one.”

“Licky and Teds?” Kent asked, naming their first-line D-men, who always seemed to be able to read each other’s minds.

“Yeah. A dude who’s in the AHL now turned Teds, but I don’t think they formed a bond. Then Teds turned Licky, and they definitely did.”

“You don’t think? You can have more than one?”

“Yeah, sure. Lemieux has like, five.”

“Huh.” Kent digested this new information. 

“I guess that means you don’t have one, then. Or it’s one-way. That’s a thing, too. You could’ve bonded Zimmermann without him bonding you, and then you wouldn’t be able to hear him—that’s what guys call it, even though it’s not mind reading or anything—but he’d be able to hear you.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t have anything like that,” Kent said. “Why d’you ask?”

“You just seem real close. And damn, if anybody has some insight into that guy’s head, we could use it. The dude plays hockey like a god, but he’s definitely autistic or some shit and half the time nobody knows what he’s going to do.”

“He’s autistic,” repeated Kent. Yeah, Jack had his weirdnesses, but autistic?

“Like, Asperger’s? My sister has it,” said Shorty, misunderstanding. “C’mon, you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed how bad he is at social cues, or how he never wants to talk about anything but hockey. The rest of us love it, yeah, but you and me, after a long couple games, we just need to relax and watch some TV or play with the DS, right? And come back to hockey in the morning. But Zimmermann, he watches tape for _fun._ ”

That…was true, Kent realized. He didn’t know anything about autism, and made a mental note to look it up.

“Short! Parser! Get your asses in the showers!” bellowed Coach, and the moment was gone. 

Kent was so busy trying to rearrange his worldview to include _is Jack Zimmermann autistic_ that he forgot all about the bonding conversation with Shorty until Jack sent him a puck when he couldn’t possibly have seen Kent there. At first, Kent was just euphoric—“I can’t believe you just did that! How the fuck did you just pull that off? That was amazing.”—but when that died down he came back to _how_ and added that to his recent realization that Jack was in fact shit at social cues, but never Kent’s. Kent, he could always read. Which he had until that moment been writing off to closeness, and, let’s face it, feeling smug about being Jack Zimmermann’s exception. 

It still seemed like a coincidence, though, so he started reading about bonding too. There wasn’t exactly any research in the library, so he ended up on Reddit, and he learned that they don’t form right away, that they’re not predictable, that they seem to be correlated with how close the wolves in question are but that’s no guarantee.

He and Jack were freaking out about the draft together when it occurred to him that if Jack was indeed picking up on his emotions, it behooved him to calm the fuck down, so he took deep breaths and told himself everything would be fine. 

Jack did calm down, but it still could’ve been a coincidence. 

Of all things, it was a stubbed toe that clinched it. Kent hit the edge of a bench with his pinky toe and hopped on the spot, waiting for the pain to die down. Jack was in his field of view, so it was easy for Kent to notice him flinch—despite the fact his back was turned, and he hadn’t seen the hit.

The wave of sadness was completely unexpected. Kent cared about Jack enough to bond him, but not the other way around? And then Jack made it so much worse by saying, “Are you okay, Kenny? Not the toe, I mean, you seem upset.” And Kent knew exactly how Jack knew that and he knew Jack just wasn’t going to tell him they were one-sided bonded. 

“Fine,” he muttered. If Jack wasn’t going to bring it up, then he wasn’t going to, either.

It never hurt worse than it did when Kent had to read in the goddamn newspaper that his best friend, his lover, had dropped out of the draft after a fucking drug overdose, and knew that if only Jack had bonded him back he would have known how much anxiety Jack was hiding, would have been able to help him, would at least have been with him at the eleventh hour. 

But no. He read it in the newspaper, and he went to the draft.

He went first overall, and smiled for the cameras, and he wondered if Jack was watching on TV, if he knew how fake the smile was, worse, knew that part of Kent was genuinely happy right now even though his lover was in the hospital.

He turned up at a party five years later and wondered when Jack had gotten so good at ignoring the bond that he hadn’t felt Kent coming.


	3. The Pack

Okay, Kent knew that professional NHL players were werewolves. It was kind of hard to forget. And Yet. Being surrounded by his new team, being intimately aware that all of these people were wolves that he didn’t know, was the _weirdest fucking thing._ He wasn’t sure how much of his awareness was instinct, some subconscious smell thing maybe, and how much was just the intellectual knowing. 

This was his new pack. And he had no idea what to do about it.

The Aces also drafted a winger called Thomas and a goalie called Hellebuyck, and Aces management told them they would be meeting the team at a get-together two days from then at the captain’s house.

Two days from then was the full moon.

Kent used most of the remaining time on the flight from Montreal to Vegas. His agent got him in a hotel room, with promises to help him apartment hunt in the following days. One of the As, a guy named Jullien Severin but called Juicy, called him to find out where he lived and explain that he’d be their ride to the captain’s house, that he’d pick Kent up at four and drop him off again the next morning.

And, okay. Looked like he was going to run with his new pack.

Juicy was a jovial, Canadian giant. He already had Hellebuyck (“Call me Buckeye”) who looked foreboding as hell but was actually quite friendly, and they were on their way to get Thomas. Kent couldn’t shake the feeling that he ought to have fingered himself. He hadn’t quite realized how much he’d associated the moon with getting roughly fucked by Jack, and it was really messing with his ability to focus on meeting his new teammates. Thankfully, Juicy kept up the majority of the conversation by himself. 

Sean Thomas was even shorter than Kent, a brown guy with a mischievous smile whose hands never stopped moving. He was as much of a talker as Juicy, and Kent exchanged a look with Buckeye, resigning themselves to being the quiet ones in this car. 

He’d heard all he ever wanted to know about major league baseball by the time they got to Crossbinder’s house. Thankfully, there were another sixteen guys to meet, and he extricated himself from Thomas and Juicy to make the rounds.

He shook a lot of hands, learned and forgot a lot of names, and finally ended up with Bucky, a D-man with excellent flow and perpetual five o’clock shadow, who taught him his mnemonic on the whiteboard Crosser had hanging in his dining room.

“So you got the C and the As, right,” said Bucky, writing out _Crosser, Juicy, Anders_. “Then you got the three Ls.” This was _L-man, Laker, Lebber_. “And the girls.” _Rosy, Kesha, Lulu_. “And, finally, the best sentence known to man.” _Kirk Fletches Ten Ropes in Belize with Staph Riddled Lungs._ Kent started laughing. “And of course me and Nomad, but a dude doesn’t forget to count his own D-partner.”

“You’re gonna have to edit it now,” said Kent. “With me and Buckeye, and whatever we end up calling Thomas.”

“I already have to edit it,” moaned Bucky. “Lungs and Riddler got traded.” 

If Kent had been drinking his Jack Daniels, he’d have choked on it. “I’ll help you edit it,” he promised, “As soon as Thomas gets named.”

Bucky introduced him to his D-man, a blonde mountain of a man called Nomad, which Kent was assured was a comic book reference he wasn’t to ask about if he didn’t want a twenty-minute lecture from the man. Nomad in turn dragged him over to meet the other A, Erik Andersson. It wasn’t that he hadn’t looked at the Aces roster before now, but he’d been more focused on the Islanders, and twenty names is a lot to memorize, not even taking the nicknames into account. He could not for the life of him remember Nomad’s real name. Anders, in turn, dragged him into a poker game and started teaching him the finer points of their teammates’ tells without discretion. “Kesha bites his lip like that, he has a terrible hand, but he loves to bluff,” he explained loudly, heedless of Kesha’s glaring. They played for a few hours, and Anders appeared to remember something.

“Parson! Where are Thomas and Hellebuyck? We need to have the girl talk before it gets dark.” He gave them a lascivious grin.

“Uh, man,” started Kent, “Pretty sure we’ve all had the Talk already. I know we’re babies to you, but we are actually grown-ass adults.”

“No, no, not the girls in general talk, the girls _here_ talk,” explained Anders as they collected the other rookies. He led them to a corner of the room and lowered his voice. “In Juniors, mostly the pack is teammates, yes? Not a lot of girls.” He waited for nods. “Professional, is different. Some players in long-term relationships, they change the girl. Some, not. And then, you know, divorce happen. Breakups happen. Or some girls, they are born wolves, or play sports themselves, or get attacked and bit.”

“Wait,” said Buckeye. “Are you trying to tell us that there are female wolves who are part of the pack, and that not all of them are taken?”

Anders tapped his nose. “Wolves need pack. Not good for wolves to be alone. So, female wolves, they move to the area, they seek out local pack. Local pack is us. So, taken ones.” He pointed out Lebber and the woman he had his arm around. “Ruslana, married to Lebber.” A tall woman pouring herself a drink. “Tara, serious girlfriend of Rosy. Middle one playing beer pong, that Harper, engaged to Belize.” Harper whooped as she won the game and Kent thought she seemed quite in her element. “Juicy, L-man and Crosser, their wives not wolves, so Juicy and L-man’s wives not coming to overnight functions, and Crosser’s wife heading to bed early.” He pointed at Mrs. Crossbinder, who Kent had already met, poised to walk upstairs.

“Are moons just, like, an orgy here?” Kent asked in bewilderment. 

“Only a little!” laughed Anders. “First run together, hunt together, groom together. Then, you want lots of sex, you get lots of sex. You seeing someone else, you hang with the old guys.”

“Oh, c’mon, it’s not like it’s cheating if you’re wolfed out,” said Fletch, overhearing. “Pack time is pack time.”

“Controversial,” said Anders, smile dropping. 

“Hey,” broke in a beautiful young black woman, her eyes locked on Thomas. “You wanna?”

Thomas’ face broke into a grin and he stepped forward. Anders stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“You treat Lizzie like princess,” he warned. “That last piece of talk. Be good to the girls, you have to hunt with them for the foreseeable future.”

“Don’t worry, hon bun,” said Lizzie, “I know how to handle a boy.” Anders leaned down to kiss her chastely. They exchanged a fond smile, and Kent wondered if they were ex-lovers. Or current lovers, come to that. This was an ideal setup for a friends-with-benefits web. 

Lizzie dragged Thomas off by the hand, whispering in his ear. Buckeye and Kent exchanged a glance. Then, as if by mutual agreement, they separated.

Kent…had never given serious thought to sleeping with a girl. But god, he was horny, and he wasn’t about to out himself even if he thought any of the men would be up for it. He sidled over to a brunette who was sitting alone, messing with her cell phone. He hadn’t really made a decision when she looked up.

“Hey, handsome.” Despite the greeting, she sounded shy. 

“Hey,” Kent answered, plopping down in a chair by her. “So, uh, how does this work? I thought Anders said hunt first?”

“Technically, hunt first,” she said, putting her phone away. “Some people like transition sex enough, or they’re desperate enough, that they get off first and then catch up with the hunt, and then go back for seconds later.” 

Kent nodded, staring at the arm of his chair. A beat of silence. Then, “D’you wanna make out?” asked the girl, blushing furiously.

“Okay,” said Kent, feeling his own cheeks go red. “Uh. I’m Kent.”

“Madeleine.”

After a few false starts, Kent scooted closer and they both leaned forward to kiss. Her skin was softer than Jack’s, her lips plush and hesitant. After a minute, Kent helped her climb into his lap for a better angle, and ran his hands over her body, marveling at the differences. He’d only ever slept with Jack, but he’d slept with Jack _a lot._ He stroked over her butt and gave it a squeeze, giving himself a mental pat on the back when she squirmed and made a noise. Next, he petted her breasts, which were completely foreign to him. She helped, directing his hands how she wanted them, finally moving one down to rub her through her clothes. He was getting hard, which both surprised him and didn’t. Then, he felt the now-familiar buzzing in his extremities and heatwave through his core. Madeleine clearly did too, because she stood up and stripped methodically, putting her clothes in a neat pile. Kent copied her, and the transformation undertook them. They headed out the door, following a handful of other wolves who’d stayed behind till now—he spotted Rosy and Tara coming out of one of the spare bedrooms—and trekked out into the desert until they met up with everyone who’d got there ahead of them. A large tree with low-hanging branches held more stacks of clothing.

Kent was better, this time, at matching up people he’d only seen as human with their wolf forms. Wolf after wolf came up to sniff him. Some licked at his ears, some nuzzled his head. Fletch play-bit him and then pranced away, so Kent chased him. The pack spread out to hunt as a group, darting over the desert ground as quick as could be, and then settled into smaller groups. Some of the vets laid down in comfortable-looking piles. Other wolves were clearly already in courtship mode, and not shy about it. Kent hoped that when he was human again, he’d be able to look Harper in the face after seeing Belize mount her. The combination of smells began to settle into something he could label _pack_. 

Madeleine sought him out, prancing up and bumping his nose with her own before turning away and flagging her tail so he could see her swollen vulva. She turned before he could decide what to do with it and mouthed at his muzzle, which he returned. They frolicked for a bit, making for a longer foreplay than he’d ever had with Jack to be sure. She turned again and flagged her tail, so Kent licked at her vulva, and she lowered her front to the ground.

Oh. Right.

That was the position _Kent_ was usually in, but of course he was expected to top here. He put his faith in his wolf instincts, mounted her, and pushed in.

It…wasn’t bad. He’d never fucked Jack, so the closest thing he had to compare it to was getting a blowjob. Having his dick in a warm, wet space was always going to be nice. He came eventually, but found himself stuck when he tried to get down. Right. The tie. Madeleine helped maneuver, and they ended up facing away from each other, tail to tail, still attached at the dick. Kent took the opportunity to look around. They weren’t exactly in the midst of the pack anymore, but they weren’t as far away as Jack would usually take him, so Kent could see several couples in the process of mating. 

Eventually, his dick slipped out of Madeleine, and he licked the side of her head and moved off, lest she decide she wanted to do it again. Instead, he found Juicy and started a play-fight, and then headed back to the house to curl up with Fletch and Roper until morning. 

Morning found him next to Madeleine again while they got ready to go.

Out of the silence, she said, “So this is a really personal question, and feel free to tell me to fuck off, but are you gay?”

Kent wasn’t drinking anything, and he still started coughing. 

“Man, I didn’t think I was that bad in bed,” he said, trying to smirk at her.

“It’s just, you’re clearly practiced at kissing. A+ kissing. And you know your way around an ass, too. But you didn’t seem to have any idea what to do with my boobs or clit. So either you’ve made out with a lot of people but never made it to second, or you’ve had plenty of sex, but all with other guys. Or, like, you had a trans girlfriend, I don’t want to be cissexist.”

“Yeah, I’m gay,” he admitted, not looking at her. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Course not. Just, I hope you didn’t feel pressured, or anything? I know the guys are all about the group orgy thing on full moons...”

“No!” Kent yelped. “I was just. Curious. Sorry.”

“Nothing wrong with experimenting,” she assured him. And then, “I’m bi.”

“Cool,” said Kent, and offered her a fist bump.


	4. The D-men

Time passed. Thomas got named Fingers for the way he liked to do the evil-villain-finger-wiggling-prayer-position thing. Kent was deemed Parser rather than Parse, and Buckeye was forcibly renamed to HellBell, on the logic that ‘Buckeye’ sounded too close to ‘Bucky’. Kent and Fingers ended up on a line with Laker. Kent developed and got over a crush on Fingers. He and Madeleine bonded over their queerness, and continued to spend moons together, though now it was hunting, racing, and roughhousing rather than fucking. Juicy sprained his ankle and Kent ended up on first line for a few weeks. Then they started winning. And they kept winning. Kent stayed on first line while Juicy started playing with Picard and Swoops and Lulu got boosted to Kent’s old line. They made it to the playoffs, scraped a win at the conference finals, but got knocked out by the Flyers. Kent won the Calder and was nominated for the All-Star Game. He spent a third of his summer trying to gain back the weight he’d lost, and another third gay bar-hopping with Madeleine, avoiding being recognized partly by context, partly because people expected him to be taller, and partly by slicking his hair _into_ spikes instead of _out_. He hooked up with men, including a few who said, “Man, you look just like Kent Parson,” to which he always replied, “Yeah, I get that a lot.” 

The start-of-year moon party at the captain’s house happened, and Kent was surprised to remember that at least some rookies usually got sent down, and that the attitude of ‘yes, you are pack now’ that had infused the party last year was gone. Preseason happened. None of the rookies stayed. L-man got traded for Luis “Wooder” Wood. The Aces went to the playoffs and got knocked out in the second round. Crosser and Anders retired, and were replaced with Jacob “Scraps” Smith, named for his propensity for getting into fights, and Jeffrey “Swoops” Troy, named for his inexplicable fascination with basketball. Jack went to college to play NCAA. A rare non-teammate guy who Kent was sure was gay joined the pack, and Kent spent an absurd amount of energy not coming onto him during moons. Madeleine met a guy, and spent an uncharacteristic amount of time gushing over him. Kent got the C and bought a house. 

That meant that _he_ was hosting the moon party, among a million other things that were now his job. Juicy was invaluable in helping him not drop any of the balls, like making sure the extended pack got Kent’s new address. He did his best to make the rookies feel welcome, gave them the girls talk himself, and made sure they were at the front of the group when it was time to hunt. They only kept Nathan Brownslow, replacing Tenner, who’d gotten traded, but then Fingers broke a rib in a nasty hit by Wilson in a Caps game and went on IR, so they called up Jay Cathcart and Kent was glad of his foresight when Cathcart fit seamlessly in. Kent put all his energy into being a good captain and making a winning team out of his boys, and it paid off. They entered the playoffs, lost to the Kings twice, and then rallied and beat them three times, lost one, and won one. They took the Sharks in five games, the Preds in six, and then the Stanley Cup Finals, and they took home the cup in one of the best days of Kent’s life. Jack started his second year at college. Buoyed by success, Kent went to visit him, was rebuffed, and ended up coming out to Swoops and crying drunkenly on the phone to Madeleine, who thoroughly distracted him by telling him she and Parker were now also dating Lizzie. 

Kent’s fourth season was fucking awful. Despite his best efforts, they didn’t even make the playoffs. Reporters started talking about how the Aces were looking more like they had before they drafted Kent, which was total horseshit, because obviously _then_ they were so badly off they got the number one draft pick. The Blackhawks won, and Kent got very drunk. Management apparently panicked, and they traded HellBell to the Jets, Bucky and Nomad to the Rangers, and Kesha to the Pens, receiving in return a draft pick goalie called Octopus for his save percentage and a pair of non-bonded D-men called Sponge and Spiny.

“What are we, the fucking Sharks?” asked Kent to general amusement when someone made a reference to Spiny being a sea urchin and he realized they then had a trifecta of water creatures.

He instituted new required team bonding time, both during moons and the rest of the time, trying to make up for the sudden influx of new players. Sponge and Spiny, although they’d practically just met, barely spent any time out of each other’s company, already aware they’d have to work twice as hard to compete with bonded pairs. About halfway through the season, they came up to Kent and asked to talk alone. Kent found an empty conference room, and Spiny shut the door behind them. 

“You probably aren’t gonna know the answer to this either,” started Sponge, “but we don’t know who else to ask.”

“Hit me,” said Kent, steeling himself for whatever was to come. 

It still blindsided him.

“What happens if you bite someone who’s already a wolf? Is it possible for a bond to develop?”

Kent blinked. He took a second to just stare at them. Then he took another second to seriously consider the question and whether he’d ever heard anything relevant. “I have no clue,” he answered finally. “I can google it, but I imagine you’ve already done that.”

“I mean,” Spiny started, “there are skill levels to googling, so feel free.” He took a deep breath. “Any objection to us trying it?”

Kent blinked again. 

“Let me look around a little before you jump right in?” he said finally. “But assuming I can’t find anything—yeah, why not? We’re Vegas, we gamble.”

Reddit had no answers, so he ended up calling Bob. 

“I’ve heard legends,” said Bob. “’Course, D-pairs who aren’t bonded are getting rarer these days, and, contrary to popular belief, the bond only improves your game so much. Mario was bonded to half his team, but they still lost plenty.”

“That’s true, then? About Lemieux?”

“Oh, yes. He turned them in Juniors, mostly. Fancied himself giving the gift of better hockey. And then they got themselves traded back to him one way or another.”

“Anyway,” said Kent, forcibly wrenching his attention back to the topic at hand. “It’s possible for wolves to bond without turning? And it’s not going to hurt them if it doesn’t work?”

“I’ve never heard of there being problems with it,” said Bob. “Though of course there’s the eternal problem of pairs that expect to bond and don’t. That always causes something of a domestic dispute.”

Kent passed the information on, earning thanks from Sponge and Spiny. 

For some reason, he expected them to do it in human form, like Jack had, but of course their teeth were sharper in wolf form, and it was the next full moon that he witnessed Spiny take a bite out of Sponge’s shoulder. Sponge yelped at him, and Spiny licked over the wound in mute apology, cowering when Sponge turned on him. But Sponge didn’t do anything, just settled down and let Spiny curl up with him. Kent nodded approvingly, and went off to do his own thing. 

He pulled Sponge and Spiny aside after practice a few days later. “Any news?” he asked quietly. They nodded at him eagerly.

“We get flashes of it,” said Sponge. “It hasn’t settled yet. But it’s coming.” Kent clapped them both on the shoulder and told them he was glad for them.

And he was, but he was also _so goddamned jealous_ at how _easy_ it had been for them. It’s not the same, he told himself, they’re not in love with each other, but that just made it worse, _they aren’t even in love with each other but they still got the two-way bond,_ which was ridiculous because Kent had known plenty of two-way bonded people and never gotten upset about it before. He told himself firmly to chill.

At least until Sponge and Spiny started acting oddly and missing more passes than before. He pulled them aside one at a time to ask what was up, and they each told him a variation of _maybe I wasn’t as ready as I thought to let him into my head._ Kent felt very out of his depth, and still very jealous, because now they had exactly what he wanted and they didn’t want it anymore? But he wanted his D-men to get their relationship back more than he wanted to throw himself a pity party. Then again, he still had no idea how to help them. “Try hanging out at the moon?” he suggested to Sponge. “Everything seems simpler when I’m wolfed out.”

“Maybe,” said Sponge, but he looked unconvinced.

And then the next moon happened, and it seemed to work, better than Kent had expected. He kept an eye on Sponge and Spiny as they played and nuzzled at each other, seeming ecstatic to be together non-awkwardly again. Spiny started grooming Sponge, running his nose along Sponge’s jaw, and then reared up on his hind legs and appeared to pretend to mount him. 

Kent’s brain stuttered to a halt. 

When it came back on again, Spiny was licking at Sponge’s anus, and, yep, that was play-mounting, all right. His D-men were in the middle of fucking _courting._ Sponge nuzzled at Spiny, and turned and fucking _flagged,_ and nope, this was not happening. Kent barked.

Spiny and Sponge startled, their body language clearly portraying ‘why are you interfering, go the fuck away.’ For the first time, Kent really wished he could talk. He barked again and got in the middle of them, bodily shoving them apart. They went, with some grumbling, and Kent sat himself on horny-wolf-babysitting duty for the rest of the night, much to the D-pair’s obvious chagrin. 

He realized how this was going to look, so he didn’t let them sneak off as the sun rose, but herded them back to his own house, pawing open the door (now he knew that it was no handy coincidence that the Zimmermanns had a handle on their door) and settling down in the living room to transform. 

He’d gone through the possible reactions they would have over and over while he waited for dawn—they would try to deny everything, they would fuck up their partnership with avoidance forever, they would think he was a homophobe, they would be worried sick about what was about to happen. So as soon as he got his voice back, he spoke up.

“I don’t care that you want to fuck each other. It’s just that doing it for the first time as wolves is a bad idea for a whole handful of reasons. So talk it out, be honest about your feelings, you both already know the other one wants you back, and then for the love of god research gay sex and do actual prep or you’re going to hurt Sponge.”

Both of them were bright red and looking anywhere but at the others. Kent sighed.

“I was fucking my liney back in the Q, I do actually know what I’m talking about. Push through the embarrassment, guys, you can do this. Now get out of here, I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it with me here.”

Neither of them moved. Sponge fidgeted and looked over at Spiny. Spiny, though, was stock still. 

“What?” Kent asked.

“I don’t think he can move,” said Sponge slowly. “He’s panicking.” 

Shit.

Kent pulled his boxers back on from where they were lying on the floor so he would be slightly less naked and sat on the floor near Spiny. 

“You okay, man? Your breathing seems okay.”

“He’s just.” Sponge stopped. “Stuck.” Huh. Very different from Jack’s panic.

“Is it okay if I touch you?” Kent asked. No answer. Of course. What had he expected?

Sponge scooted over and laid a hand tentatively on Spiny’s shoulder. When he got no reaction, he stretched his arm across both shoulders and tugged his partner close. Spiny’s eyes shut and he exhaled.

“There you go,” Sponge murmured. “Can you move your hand for me?” A beat, and then Spiny’s hand slid across his knee to touch Sponge’s. Kent felt abruptly out of place.

“You got this, I think,” he said. He expected no answer, nor did he get one. “Yell if you need me.” He slipped out of the room and made himself busy. When he peeked back in, Sponge was pressing a kiss to Spiny’s forehead. Kent smiled.


	5. The Proposal

They almost win the Cup that year. The Bruins trounce them in the end, due to half the team nursing injuries and sheer dumb luck (seriously, how was it possible to have that many pucks hit the posts?), but they at least managed to knock out the Blackhawks in the Western Conference finals, so Kent wasn’t as worried as he could be about management making more crazy-ass decisions. Still, though. Jack’s junior year was ending; he’d be a free agent soon. Kent had heard he was talking to Falconers management, but zilch about Aces. So the day before a Bruins game he drove down to Samwell.

He was rebuffed a second time, worse than the first, and ended up pulling out the worst things he could think of to throw in Jack’s face, to make him hurt the way Kent was hurting. He played a painful hockey game (what else could it be against the team that took the Cup from them, even though they played well), came home, impulse bought a Maine Coon online while very drunk, and forgot all about it until he got a message from the seller asking to arrange a pickup date.

Was this what it felt like to find out you were pregnant and have to decide if you were getting an abortion?

Kent kept the cat. Kent Purrson, Jr. sounded like a good name. Then she turned out to be a girl, and it was amended to Kit. But Kent kept fucking it up, so he ended up just calling her Purrs half the time, and that was the name he put on her Instagram.

Then Madeleine called.

“Parser, I need a favor,” she said, sighing as though exhausted.

“What’s up?” Kent shifted the phone to his other hand so he could pet Kit, who had deigned to curl up beside him.

“Parker wants to be turned.”

Kent blinked. But, it wasn’t really that surprising, was it, they’d been together for around two years now. Belize had turned Harper well before he’d married her. That was plenty of time for Parker to feel left out when his girlfriends ran off to hang out with a bunch of hockey players every full moon and sent him home at sundown.

“Okay?”

“And I need you to do it.”

Kent’s hand stilled on Kit’s head for long enough that she squeaked at him. He resumed petting her. “You _what now_?”

“I…Can we FaceTime?” Kent flicked over. Madeleine appeared on his phone screen, red-eyed and makeup-free.

“What’s up, girl twirl?” he asked, worried. “Why me?”

“I can’t be the one to do this to someone else,” she said, face screwing up. “Even though he wants it. Even though he’s wanted it for a long time now, I can’t…” She burst into tears.

“Fuck FaceTime, I’m coming over,” said Kent. “Are you at home?” She nodded, gasping a little as she tried to get herself under control. “Okay. Be right there.” He grabbed his keys and wallet. “Do you want me to stay on the line, or no?”

“Okay,” she said, and he propped the phone in the drink compartment. The Bluetooth took over the call, but they didn’t talk other than for Kent to give her updates on his progress.

“All right, I’m pulling in,” he said after what seemed like forever but was really only ten minutes. She opened the door for him, red-faced and miserable, but thankfully not crying anymore. Kent pulled her into a hug, and she buried her face in his shoulder. He rocked her back and forth gently. She took a deep breath.

“I wasn’t turned consensually,” she said into his shoulder. “A guy bit me in bed. It was a one-night stand. And I had no idea what was going to happen, or what was happening when I changed the first time, or how to find a pack.”

Kent’s insides turned cold. He hadn’t exactly agreed to become a werewolf, either, and while it didn’t turn out to be a one-night stand, it was still unplanned sex. Jack had been there, afterwards, and Kent had said _anything,_ but it was still too close to his own experience for him to be comfortable with her obvious trauma, when he was fine. He hadn’t been asked, but he hadn’t regretted it, either, or ever fought with Jack about going through with it without explaining (not that he could imagine Jack “what is communication” Zimmermann finding a way to tactfully explain werewolves without making Kent think he was delusional).

He petted her hair and didn’t say anything.

“I’ve been trying to tell myself that it’s different, he knows exactly what’s happening, he’s wanted it for a while, we’re in a serious relationship and he wants to share that part of my life, our life. But I can’t do it, Ken.” She pulled back to look at him. “I can’t make that change for someone else.”

“Okay,” he said, trying to organize his thoughts. “You don’t have to. You never have to. But what about Lizzie?”

“She hasn’t been with us as long, she’s our secondary, and she doesn’t want to do it, either. She says she’s both too close and too far away from the situation to be comfortable. And I don’t think it bothers her nearly as much as me, but how can I ask her to put aside her discomfort? That’s the same as doing it myself, asking someone unwilling. It doesn’t have to be you, it could be anyone who doesn’t mind turning someone they’re not in a serious relationship with—or playing hockey with—but.” She swallowed. “I trust you. And I think Parker would prefer it be someone I trusted.”

Kent squeezed her shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad,” he said softly. He wondered privately if Madeleine thought he did this all the time, that it was a casual thing among hockey players, to bite people. He didn’t think she’d be any more comfortable with asking him than Lizzie if she knew his real history with it.

But the long and the short of it was, it didn’t bother him like it did Lizzie, not in the abstract, anyway. He and Jack had been so caught up in each other in Juniors he hadn’t been motivated to turn any of his fellows, and by the time he made it to the show, of course all the hockey players he knew were already wolves. And he hadn’t been in a serious relationship that entire time. But he had nothing against the idea of turning someone, especially someone who knew what they were asking for, unlike his younger self. It hit him that he was lucky, that he could so easily have been Madeleine instead, hurt and betrayed and paralyzed with fear at the mere thought of changing someone else.

“Can I talk to him before I commit?” he asked instead. “All of us together, maybe?”

“Of course,” she said. “Tonight, or do you want to sleep on it?”

He blinked.

“Uh. Tonight works.”

“Parker gets home around six, and Lizzie’s coming over then, too, for dinner. I’ll text them and let them know you’ll be here too.”

They ended up watching a bunch of Brooklyn Nine-Nine while they waited for dinnertime to arrive. Madeleine was back to cheerful by the time Parker came in, kicking off his shoes and coming over to kiss her upside-down.

“Hey, Kent,” he said, offering his fist for a bump. “How’re things?”

“Cool,” said Kent, then, “Cool cool cool cool cool.” Madeleine laughed and Parker grinned.

“On the B99 train, then? Noice.”

“Toit,” replied Kent.

They’d met before; Madeleine brought him to the daylight part of pack gatherings often enough, but they’d never really gotten close. Parker was tall and lanky, and he reminded Kent of a slightly older [Matt Nieto](https://www.google.com/search?q=matt+nieto&client=firefox-b-1-ab&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=MsyxKlrjKofygM%253A%252CZ-VL8Em_zxOruM%252C_&usg=__X02SJlI0wsbFE0LFnSJ8cPSgwOA%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKzOzexs7bAhWME5AKHaHNA4wQ_h0IswEwDg#imgrc=MsyxKlrjKofygM:) with [William Karlsson](https://www.google.com/search?q=william+karlsson&client=firefox-b-1-ab&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7sNPtxs7bAhWHgZAKHZBrDTUQ_AUICygC&biw=1366&bih=610#imgrc=VaUpKO6KAo-RiM:)-level flow and absurdly high cheekbones.

Parker plopped down next to Madeleine, and Kent had no idea what to say.

“Uh, should we be making dinner?”

“Dinner’s in the crockpot,” said Madeleine. “It’s my day off, so it’s my job. But I didn’t feel like it, so. Crockpot.”

Parker looked concerned. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” said Madeleine, then sighed. “Actually. I asked Kent to turn you.” Parker visibly startled.

“Hang on, you haven’t actually talked about this?” said Kent.

“We talked about how she and Lizzie don’t want to,” said Parker. “And there was talk of asking a friend to do it.”

“Oh. That’s okay then.”

Lizzie walked in just then. “Hi guys,” she said. “God, I’m tired.”

“Well, this isn’t going to be restful,” said Madeleine, a touch bitterly.

“Huh? Oh, hi, Kent, what are you doing here?”

“Madeleine asked me to bite your boy,” said Kent, pretending nonchalance and examining his fingernails.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” said Lizzie, and unzipped her boots.

“Why do you say that?” asked Kent, looking up. Lizzie started getting bowls out of a cabinet. She shrugged.

“You know us. You’re not a dick. Just seems good.”

Madeleine stood up to help her ladle soup into bowls and set the table. Kent and Parker followed.

“Fuck, I have no idea how to have this conversation,” Kent sighed after a minute of silence.

“You were the one who wanted to have it, so I can’t help you,” said Madeleine dryly.

“I know,” moaned Kent, tossing his head back and staring at the ceiling as though it would help. “It just seems wrong to agree to something like that without the dude even being in the room.”

“Well, hi, I’m in the room now,” said Parker, giving a dorky little wave. Kent laughed. “I’ve been with Madeleine for a long time. I want to be part of her life in this way, too. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and talking to Madeleine and Lizzie about the consequences, and I’m ready. They say they’d like to have me on moon nights, but they don’t want to turn me themselves, and I respect that.”

“And you don’t mind it not being them?” asked Kent. “You’re sure you’re okay with getting turned by a casual acquaintance? You won’t be able to bond them.” Well. Right away, anyway, but that seemed superfluous.

“Yeah,” said Parker simply. “It’s not about the experience of getting turned, it’s about the experience of being with them on moons. And so what if I can’t read their minds? Most couples can’t. It’s not a deal-breaker.”

And. Well. Kent had nothing more to say to that.

“Okay. I can do it in either form. Teeth are sharper in wolf form, though, so if I do it as a human, it’s gotta be in an area with thin skin.” He gave a smirk he didn’t feel. “So, lips.”

Probably there were other areas, but lips was the one he knew would work. It wasn’t as though he had practice attempting to draw blood from different areas of the body.

“That won’t be a hardship,” said Parker, smirking back. “You’re a beautiful man, Kent Parson.”

Kent only managed not to blush because of years of fan interactions.

“Okay. You wanna do this after dinner?”

“Yeah, I wanna see you mack on our man, Parser,” said Lizzie, grinning.

They finished dinner in relative quiet, chatting about aimless things like the plot of Brooklyn Nine-Nine earlier.

“You guys can go do the thing if you want, I’ll clean up,” said Madeleine when everyone had set their spoon down. So Lizzie took Kent and Parker each by a hand and drew them into the living room.

“Sit,” she said, directing them at the sofa. They sat. Lizzie perched in a chair across from them, and Kent thought she looked more as though she was about to direct a threesome than watch a werewolf turning.

“Bite me, Parson,” said Parker, grinning. Kent kissed him.

He didn’t draw it out like Jack did. They weren’t in a relationship, he should keep it professional. Or. Whatever. Instead, he bit down until he tasted blood, then drew back.

“Suck on it to make it stop bleeding,” he instructed, and Parker did.

“That was anticlimactic,” he said wryly.

“Yeah, it is a bit,” said Kent, laughing. “If you want climactic, try having sex mid-transformation your first moon, that was a wild ride.” Parker choked on air and Lizzie started laughing.

“You know where I live,” said Parker with a wink, and damn, that speedy comeback reminded him of Zimms. Kent went through a variety of responses before giving the fuck up and standing.

“Moon’s in three days,” he said. “Do you want to do something? Just the three of you, or the four of us, or should I get some people together? It’s not a special occasion, so usually we just meet up in the woods.”

“Just the three of us, I think, if you don’t mind, Kent? I don’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“Sure, sure,” said Kent, and was not disappointed. Really.

But he was weirdly relieved when Lizzie called him the day of the moon and said, “Can you come over? Parker’s nervous and trying to pretend he isn’t.”

“And you think I’d be helpful for that?”

“Worth a try,” said Lizzie. So Kent went over. Parker opened the door and seemed to relax when he saw Kent.

“Wanna watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine?” asked Kent.

“Yes,” said Parker immediately.

“Woot!” said Lizzie, and turned on the television. It was maybe an hour until sundown, so they’d be able to get one episode in, accounting for commercials. “Special requests?”

“One of the Halloween ones,” said Kent. Parker shot him a grin.

“The third Halloween one, in particular.”

“Oh yeah, where Jake and Holt get shown up by Amy? Priceless.”

They ended up in a sprawled-out puppy pile on the futon. Parker seemed to relax as the episode went on.

“I would die for Amy Santiago, just so you know,” said Lizzie at a commercial break.

“I would die for Jake Peralta,” said Kent.

“Rosa,” said Madeleine and Parker together, and the others agreed instantly.

As the credits rolled, Kent started frantically brainstorming something to keep Parker’s mind off the night ahead.

“You should make out,” said Lizzie. Kent’s brain ground to a halt.

“Which?” said Parker.

“You and Kent. Madeleine missed it last time.”

“I wouldn’t call that making out, last time,” said Parker.

“All the more reason to try it again,” put in Madeleine.

“I’d be down,” said Kent, sitting up and climbing over legs. “You down?”

“I’m down.” This time, he reached up, cupped Kent’s face in both hands, and pulled Kent down on top of him. Their lips met.

 _Damn_ , but it’d been a long time since Kent had kissed someone properly. And Parker was a good fucking kisser. He slid a hand under Kent’s shirt and skated it up his ribs. Without thinking, Kent broke away to kiss down his jawline, nibbling at the skin there.

“I am ashamed to admit this gets me wet,” said Madeleine matter-of-factly. A rustle, and then,

“Yeah, you are.”

“Lizzie.”

“Yes?”

“Nobody consented to an orgy.”

“You’ve actually slept with everybody here, why are you complaining?”

Kent broke away long enough to say, “You girls do whatever you want, I don’t care.”

“Wait,” gasped Parker. “No, not you, Ken, I just—you and Madeleine?”

“Long time ago. _Oh,_ ” said Madeleine.

“You like that, babe?” Lizzie’s voice was low and husky.

“You fucking know I do,” gasped Madeleine.

“And suddenly it was a foursome,” said Parker, giggling a little. “Things I did not expect to be doing when I got up this morning.”

“I don’t think it’s a foursome if two of you are having sex and two of you are only kissing,” said Kent.

“Do we have time?”

“Uh, for a quickie, maybe.”

“Does anyone care if I have sex with Kent?”

“Go for it,” said Lizzie. “Does anyone care if I take Madeleine’s shorts off?”

“Oh, just do it,” said Madeleine. “And get your pretty pussy over here, or I won’t have time to get you off.”

“I kinda need an answer from you, too,” said Parker as Lizzie maneuvered her shorts off and came around to sit on Madeleine’s face.

“Oh. No, let’s do it,” said Kent. Lizzie scrabbled in a table drawer and came out with a tube, which she shoved into Parker’s open hand. Parker squirted some lube into his palm.

“Can I?” he asked, gesturing at Kent’s crotch, and upon receiving a nod, pulled his dick out. Kent was only starting to chub up, but that put him well on his way. He nabbed some lube and did likewise.

They were both close when Kent began to feel the familiar swell of heat.

“Come on,” he murmured. “Come for me.”

“Ah, _fuck,_ ” said Parker. “Do that again.”

“You like being talked to? You look so good for me, Parker, so fucking good, I want you to come, come now, come on--” Parker did with a sound like a mewl. “Good,” breathed Kent. “You feel that heat? That’s the change. Your muscles will cramp—yep.” Parker’s back arched, and he let out a shocked moan. “Oh, fuck,” Kent remembered, “we gotta get your clothes off.” He stripped his own off through the cramps and the spinning head with the ease of practice.

“Holy _fuck,_ ” said Madeleine, and groaned deeply. Lizzie let out a scream and rolled off of her. Both started stripping without waiting to catch their breath.

“We’re cutting it close,” muttered Lizzie as Kent helped Parker out of his clothes.

“Yup,” said Kent. “But we’re here. All right, you’re probably kind of dizzy, and the room’s swimming, but that’s okay, that’s normal, it’ll go away.” He finished with the clothes and scootched them into a pile. Fur was starting to sprout from everybody’s limbs, which were now all roughly the same length. “And last, your mouth goes numb.” He closed his eyes and let the transformation finish, reshaping his skull and his hands and feet. His fingers shrank to nothing, and his nails narrowed into claws. His ears retreated into his head, and he was deaf for a few seconds before new ones sprouted. His tailbone lengthened into an actual tail. When he opened his eyes again, he was surrounded by wolves.

Parker was a lovely black wolf, like Jack, almost, but with an entirely different body type and brown eyes. Kent licked his snout in what he hoped was a comforting gesture, and then tossed his head. _Let’s go._

They headed for the woods, Kent in the lead. He followed his nose to find the rest of the pack, stopping briefly to hunt a rabbit. When he spotted Coach, he shoulder-checked Parker and jerked his head, leading him over. Coach sniffed him thoroughly, then looked at Kent. Kent jerked his head at Parker. Was he going to have to get creative? But Coach just nodded once and moved along.

Kent kept an eye on Parker through the run and the hunt, but had a surprising amount of trouble ditching him once the group split apart. Parker bounced between the three of them, licking muzzles and play-fighting indiscriminately. When he licked Lizzie’s vulva, Kent tried to sneak off, but Parker bounded over and reared up, as though to mount Kent.

Oh.

 _No,_ thought Kent, _that’s not how this works, dammit,_ he was the interloper here, and even if the girls were fine with their boyfriend fucking Kent, what were they gonna do, try and figure out how to 69 in wolf form? Kent was sure they had been planning to mate with Parker tonight. And to top it off, he had not prepared to get fucked tonight.

He huffed at Parker and backed away pointedly. Parker’s ears drooped, but he backed off and kept his courting to the girls. Lizzie flagged, and Kent moved away with a purpose.

He sought them out again, close to dawn, and found them laying in a satisfied pile under an oak tree. He padded over and lay down beside them, and Madeleine huffed and nosed him. Kent swatted at her ear. Lizzie stood up purposefully, and they followed her back to the house, pausing near the edge of the woods to change back before darting into the house and hoping none of the neighbors were awake.

Kent found his clothes and pulled them back on.

“I hope you had a good time,” he told Parker, who grinned at him sleepily.

“Thanks, Ken. Thanks for talking me through it.”

“No problem,” said Kent, and he left them to their morning.

And then at practice, Coach said,

“So, Parson. Do I need to be congratulating you? Or was your boyfriend a wolf before?”

Kent stared at him. He blinked hard. The words still didn’t make sense.

“…Do you mean Parker?” he managed finally. “The wolf I brought to the pack? He’s not my boyfriend, he’s Madeleine and Lizzie’s.”

Coach raised an eyebrow. “So I assume the girls know you slept with him yesterday? I have a nose, Parson, I could smell you all over him.”

Kent felt his face burn. “Uh. Yeah. They know.”

“And you brought him to meet me because…”

“Because he’s just turned and it seemed like the thing to do when bringing in a new pack member?” said Kent, a touch hysterically. “You’re the alpha. Was I supposed to sneak him in at the back like it’s my pack to make membership decisions about?”

“Plenty do,” said Coach. “We’re a pack, not a sorority. We don’t just not let other wolves join.”

Kent thought his face might be mistaken for a stop sign soon.

“All right, my mistake, won’t happen again. Can I go now?”

“Yeah, get out of here, Parser.”

Kent fled.

 

Kent couldn’t pin down a moment when he guessed what was going on. It was a million little things, flashes of inexplicable anger, or hilarity, or arousal. It was a sensation that his brain didn’t quite feel the same as before.

It was the following moon, knowing that Parker was approaching long before he should have, excellent nose or not, it was the nervousness as Parker bounded over to give his shoulder a gentle check and a lick. It was knowing with a certainty when Parker started fucking the girls, and how many times.

And it ended in Kent standing on their doorstep just after dawn the next morning, hair still a mess from their night, and Parker opened the door before he worked up the nerve to knock.

“You bonded me,” he blurted without a hello.

Parker’s expression changed completely. “ _You’re_ where it’s coming from?”

Kent hadn’t dared to think about the possibility. “What?”

“The, the little bursts of emotions.”

Kent had to sit down on the porch chair.

“Like now,” said Parker, and his face was full of realizations. “You’re completely overwhelmed. It’s _you_. It’s not just that some corner of my brain decided _I_ was. _Why_ are you overwhelmed, though?” His brow creased and he came over to put a hand on Kent’s shoulder. “You knew, you came over here to tell me that? And how did you know?”

Kent had to swallow twice before he could speak.

“I told you _you_ bonded _me_ ,” he said. “If you’re picking up _my_ emotions, too, that means I bonded you back.”

Hope. His or Parker’s, he didn’t know. Maybe both.

Parker perched on the arm of the chair and wrapped an arm more fully around him.

“I’m glad you came. I was never gonna figure that out on my own.”

“What, you weren’t going to notice being aware of where I am all the time?”

Parker blushed. “I figured that was because of my massive crush on you.”

“ _Fuck,_ ” said Kent, and buried his face in Parker’s chest. Parker pulled him close. Without quite knowing why, he started crying.

“Hey, hey. What’s wrong?” Madeleine had joined them.

“I’m not sure. He’s feeling so many things.” Parker petted his hair. Kent felt Madeleine’s head snap up.

“He bonded you?”

“We bonded each other, apparently.”

“Ohhh, Kenny.” Her voice overflowed with empathy. “Is it Jack you’re upset about?” He managed to nod. “Correlation’s never perfect, hon. And this is just a loose one. It doesn’t mean anything that Jack didn’t bond you.” Kent cried harder.

“What’s going on?” Lizzie’s voice. Low murmurs. Then he was being moved, maneuvered into the house, placed gently on the futon, and surrounded, a box of tissues pressed into his hand.

“Go ahead and cry if you need to,” Madeleine told him. “But it doesn’t mean anything. And you have this, now. You’ll always have this.” She took his hand and he squeezed it tightly. Parker kissed him on the top of the head and tried to pull him even closer.

When Kent finally managed to calm down, he blew his nose on about eighty tissues and found a water bottle being pressed into his hand. He downed half of it.

“I want this,” Parker told him. “I understand if you don’t, but if I’m reading this right, I think you do, and you’re scared? But I want this. If you want, I’d like to date you, too.”

Kent managed a watery smile for him. “I’d like that too.”

“Then it’s settled,” said Madeleine decisively. “You’re ours now.”

“I don’t wanna screw up your dynamic,” Kent protested weakly.

“If we have to acquire some more bi people with dicks so there’s enough dick to go around, we will,” said Lizzie, and pinched him gently. “Just take the offer, Kent. Just enjoy it.”

Kent wasn’t sure that was what he meant, but he wasn’t selfless enough to argue any longer, so he tucked his head into Parker’s chest, exhausted from crying, and closed his eyes.

In the background, he heard Brooklyn Nine-Nine turn on, and he smiled.

“Just let the dulcet tones of Terry Crews lull you to sleep,” Lizzie told him.

Kent was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, but this chapter took forever about writing itself.  
> And now it fills the Kent/OMC trope as well.  
> Your faves are Brooklyn Nine-Nine trash because I am Brooklyn Nine-Nine trash.  
> Props to you if you noticed the captain america reference or the angels in america one.  
> Kesha's real name is Innokentiy Afanasievich Aristarkhov, and Kesha is an actual nickname for Innokentiy, so it seemed inevitable.


End file.
